This is a discussion on Re: ifplugd (or guessnet) stalls booting at "Configuring networkinterfaces ..." - Debian ; H.S. wrote
>I commented out the "auto etho0" and rebooted. The boot process stalled
>at "starting MTA ... exim" (or some such thing) step. So, it didn't work
>for me.
I also had this problem when I first installed sarge; ...

H.S. wrote
>I commented out the "auto etho0" and rebooted. The boot process stalled
>at "starting MTA ... exim" (or some such thing) step. So, it didn't work
>for me.

I also had this problem when I first installed sarge; in that case it was
fixed by reconfiguring exim4 (dpkg-reconfigure exim4) . I can't for the life
of me remember what the precise option was; but it lets you prevent exim4
from trying to connect to the network on boot. I'm guessing that this is a
separate problem from your network issue, and I hope this tip fixes it for
you.

John O'Hagan said...
> H.S. wrote
>
> >I commented out the "auto etho0" and rebooted. The boot process stalled
> >at "starting MTA ... exim" (or some such thing) step. So, it didn't work
> >for me.
>
> I also had this problem when I first installed sarge; in that case it was
> fixed by reconfiguring exim4 (dpkg-reconfigure exim4) . I can't for the life
> of me remember what the precise option was; but it lets you prevent exim4
> from trying to connect to the network on boot. I'm guessing that this is a
> separate problem from your network issue, and I hope this tip fixes it for
> you.

John O'Hagan wrote:
> H.S. wrote
>
>
>>I commented out the "auto etho0" and rebooted. The boot process stalled
>>at "starting MTA ... exim" (or some such thing) step. So, it didn't work
>>for me.
>
>
> I also had this problem when I first installed sarge; in that case it was
> fixed by reconfiguring exim4 (dpkg-reconfigure exim4) . I can't for the life
> of me remember what the precise option was; but it lets you prevent exim4
> from trying to connect to the network on boot. I'm guessing that this is a
> separate problem from your network issue, and I hope this tip fixes it for
> you.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
>

Thanks John and Marc, I will reconfiguring exim4 a try this evening.
BTW, if exim4's inability to connect to the internet is the problem,
shouldn't exim4 timeout trying this?

John O'Hagan wrote:
> H.S. wrote
>
>
>>I commented out the "auto etho0" and rebooted. The boot process stalled
>>at "starting MTA ... exim" (or some such thing) step. So, it didn't work
>>for me.
>
>
> I also had this problem when I first installed sarge; in that case it was
> fixed by reconfiguring exim4 (dpkg-reconfigure exim4) . I can't for the life
> of me remember what the precise option was; but it lets you prevent exim4
> from trying to connect to the network on boot. I'm guessing that this is a
> separate problem from your network issue, and I hope this tip fixes it for
> you.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John

For some reason, after upgrading today (which included quite a bit of
xorg and udev - 0.070-5) it seems to be working properly now. The hang
up at boot time has stopped from happening.

Just as an excercise, I tried reconfiguring exim4 (dpkg-reconfigure
exim4-config) and tried two options separately:
1. no configuration for now
2. minimal dns? No and then Yes. (last step)
All these changes did not have any affect on booting, all worked.

For the record, "auto eth0" does not appear in my interfaces file
anymore. Haven't tried by including it again. But yesterday boot process
was hanging in either case.

So it seems like udev upgrading seems to have solved the problem (Now
that I come to think of it, udev seems to have caused quite a bit of
problem in the recent months). Of course, I can't know for sure what the
problem really was.